{"id":896,"date":"2015-03-11T10:27:16","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T10:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/?p=896"},"modified":"2018-01-14T20:42:30","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T20:42:30","slug":"sermon-on-the-cleansing-of-the-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/sermon-on-the-cleansing-of-the-temple\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon on the Cleansing Of The Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really enjoyed writing this one – it’s going to form the basis of the sermon I am going to submit for my course – but as the visiting lecturer told us in our preaching weekend the best time to fix a sermon is after you have given it… so here you are, here’s my Cleansing Of The Temple sermon at its midpoint- it’s first presentation and before it has been re-written and re-presented. So please, take a moment and give me your feedback.<\/p>\n

Click to listen on mobile or right click to download the MP3<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve heard from the gospel this morning the story of the cleansing of the temple. We know this event is important because it\u2019s one of the few that are in all four gospels. It\u2019s quite a sedate title really \u2013 \u2018the cleansing of the temple\u2019 \u2013 as if Jesus came in with his disciples and spotted that someone had missed their turn on the cleaning rota and got the Henry out to lend a hand.<\/p>\n

In fact when you\u2019re reading the majority of John you\u2019re presented with such a divine vision of Jesus \u2013 more God, more Divine than human it\u2019s incredibly jarring to see an angry Jesus.<\/p>\n

If this were Luke I wouldn\u2019t bat an eyelid. But this is John \u2013 Jesus is always calm, collected, and thoughtful \u2013 everything he does reflects previous prophecy or is incredibly well thought through with an eye to his immediate future. \u00a0But here \u2013 just two chapters in we get this angry Jesus \u2013 and not just angry actually \u2013 but thoughtfully angry \u2013 a sustained anger.<\/p>\n

He walked into the temple \u2013 this was Passover so it would have been HEAVING, he saw people selling animals for sacrifice, saw people changing money so they could buy the temple coins to gain entry, saw the priests making big profits from this market place, saw the Temple selling for money those things that can not be bought with money.<\/p>\n

He saw people BUYING their way into Grace (or so they thought), into Heaven, and worse\u2026 the Temple was enabling it \u2013 actually not just enabling it but becoming rich by it. The Temple authorities were not worried about worship or becoming closer to God they were worried about money in the here and now, they were worried about the rules and the letter of the Law. They had lost sight of what they were there for. They were buying and selling an imitation of God\u2019s Grace.<\/p>\n

So Jesus doesn\u2019t just fly into a rage \u2013 he sits and makes a whip of cords \u2013 can you imagine the scene? Can you see how angry Jesus must have been to see all of this and then to sit and to take the time to make a whip of cords before letting lose that anger? Can you see Jesus pacing meaningfully around the Temple flailing his whip and driving out the people and the animals? He treated both in the same way \u2013 as far as he was concerned there was no difference between the moneychanger and the sheep destined for sacrifice.<\/p>\n

And then we get to the nub of why John has this incident at the stark\u00a0of Jesus ministry rather than at the end as the other gospels do\u2026 \u201cDestroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up\u201d. This is textbook John, a wonderful picture and story that helps us start to understand the change that is occurring here.<\/p>\n

This is the end of the old world of sacrifice and of only being a good Jew if you worship at THE Temple, what John is showing us here is that Jesus is destroying the old Temple, the old way of doing things and he is showing us that HE will become the Temple. When Jesus is resurrected three days after he is crucified his body becomes the sacrifice, later Jesus body is bread and Jesus body, not the lamb, is sacrifice. This allows John to point to these words from Jesus afterwards and demonstrate that He knew exactly what was coming \u2013 but of course the disciples don\u2019t understand that until after the resurrection.<\/p>\n

But so what? I\u2019ve just given you a textbook explanation of what John is doing here story wise, why it was important and I hope I\u2019ve given you a picture in your mind of an angry Jesus because for me, one of the biggest things we sometimes forget about Jesus is that he got angry.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy for us to picture Christians as people who should take Jesus example and always be nice, head tilted 45 degrees to the right and listening as you demonstrate how understanding and Jesus-like you are – but actually you\u2019re raging inside. This story shows that Jesus wasn\u2019t always nice \u2013 it shows that when things were wrong he got angry and that actually, if we want to be more like Jesus then we should get angry when things are wrong.<\/p>\n

For me right now this lesson is one of authenticity. This is why I love the Bible. Two years ago I could have read this lesson and taken from it a story of prophesy, or I could have taken another more practical lesson but this week I\u2019ve taken authenticity as a church as what the Holy Spirit is trying to show me.<\/p>\n

The Bible isn\u2019t something you read through once, these stories are not just something that you read through once and tick off and say \u2018okay, I\u2019ve read the Bible\u2019 they are something that we should live with daily. Previous generations understood this better than us \u2013 perhaps it was the lack of TV but they read the Bible together every day\u2026 Now, once something is done it\u2019s time to move onto the next thing \u2013 but the Bible gives us a framework within which the Holy Spirit can work in us to help us discern those things that we would otherwise not see \u2013 or worse would actively avoid \u2013 and for that to work, for us to have a door open to the Holy Spirit we need to sit with the Bible as much as we can \u2013 reading the same stories, the same examples, the same lessons over and over again and each time getting what we need right then, or rather what God needs us to get right then.<\/p>\n

So right now, this week, I\u2019ve been reflecting on why it is that I keep coming to this passage every time I walk into a Cathedral and I\u2019m charged for entry, or every time I see the exit through the gift shop sign on the way out of a Cathedral. I see Jesus walking in and turning over the coffee shop tables, pulling the books and olive wood statues from the shelves and smashing the glass donation boxes asking why it is we have turned the Fathers house into a market place. It\u2019s an easy picture to paint isn\u2019t it \u2013 especially when our nose is out of joint at having to part with \u00a315 to walk through the door so we can pray.<\/p>\n

The conclusion I\u2019ve come to is that this story is not about those petty things, those things that wind us up because we feel that these buildings our OURS and we should be able to wander in and out as and when we want with no barrier to entry \u2013 actually the reason I feel uncomfortable about these things is because it puts into start contrast for me the difference between the building and worship. The Cathedral, our church buildings in general, are just places we come to worship when we are called. We expect God to turn up here and to hear our prayers, but what this story shows us is that God doesn\u2019t inhabit a building \u2013 no matter how grand \u2013 God inhabits us and our worship can happen anywhere. The point of our church buildings is that they can offer two things:<\/p>\n

1 \u2013 A place to come and worship as a community
\n2 \u2013 A hook upon which we can engage others in the mission of the church<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where I come back to authenticity. Our church buildings have practical things that need to be paid for. Beyond that we have things that we need to buy to make our worship more comfortable \u2013 there\u2019s nothing wrong with that \u2013 there is nothing wrong with spending money on a new roof, or a new tower in a Cathedral so a lift can be put in \u2013 because that is being done to authentically enable our churches to be either a place of community worship \u2013 a beacon in our communities – or to enable broader mission work.<\/p>\n

Our Cathedrals and churches have become places of hope and support for a vast number of people who rely on the services \u2013 both spiritual and practical \u2013 that they offer \u2013 our churches have become places where food banks operate and credit unions are formed \u2013 we are starting to relish in the church being a force for good in the world \u2013 we are starting to relish the fact that that means DOING things not just raising money to do things. We are starting to realise that selling things in our foyer is not an invitation for Jesus to be angry with us but an opportunity to fund a homeless shelter, a food bank, a credit advisor, a way to keep the building open, warm and well lit so that it can be a sanctuary, a place of divine peace and worship.<\/p>\n

We are being authentic in our call to build the Kingdom here on earth.<\/p>\n

So next time we cringe at paying for something in church or when we see a new coffee shop in the cloisters of a Cathedral \u2013 just ask yourself if it\u2019s being authentic \u2013 and if it\u2019s not, then be like Jesus and get angry!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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I really enjoyed writing this one – it’s going to form the basis of the sermon I am going to submit for my course – but as the visiting lecturer told us in our preaching weekend the best time to fix a sermon is after you have given it… so here you are, here’s my … Continue reading “Sermon on the Cleansing Of The Temple”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[226,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-sermons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}